Inside Out, Upside Down, Ass Backwards!

       I've always thought of myself as a relatively intelligent person. Even while what was seemingly to me the rest of the world was screaming I was doing bad, or was a loser in this aspect or that. When I was doing things I knew my mother would freak out, and possibly through misplaced sense of attempting to protect me from myself had me in legal entanglements I'd likely still be dealing with. I just hid those things as best I could. Which was not that tough, my relationship with my mother, while I feel is in a good place, many have called a bit distant.  Truth be told, all of my relationships are only so close. I have actively worked to disentangle myself from any relationship that acted as a constriction on the concept of who, or what I am.  No one knows what I am, or for that matter what they are, when I bump up against someone that is insistent on defining me, and has expectations based on them projecting what they think I should be, or should do. I had rejected the motivations, and even the pretenses behind them at a very early age.  Not out of a sense of rebellion, I just like to hang out, listen to music, smoke some herb, and play with ideas.  So far all my life I've insisted I am not more intelligent than anyone else, not that I think of myself as stupid. Quite the contrary, I see myself as capable of doing, learning, and being anything I choose to be. I just understand that everyone else is the same way, People around me have consistently told me, I was smarter than the average bear. This is still a projection, and after a point it doesn't matter if it's true or accurate, or even how I feel about it.  As a person I will do what I can to fulfill the expectations placed upon me by those around me.  Add in mind expanding chemicals taken in quantity as an informal spiritual exploration, personal experimentation. Shake vigorously, and wait.  I still reject much of the fundamental premise of what is thought of as western materialist world view. That view of creation, that consciousness stems from matter, that we are looking for a fundamental particle, a unified field theory equation.  That we are still looking for proof that something continues after what we call physical death,  Zero is a concept, it is no where reflected in what we experience here. The so called vacuum of space, is still a relative state.  The scale of background, of the fabric of we call space/time is so far removed from us in scale it's conceptual. We have no tools that can show, or measure things at Planck scale. We can do so many things, but in our desire to validate our experience as physical beings, we tear at the fabric of creation itself.  Attempting to find a particle that imparts mass is in my understanding about the ultimate fools errand.  Energy equals mass * the speed of light squared, the energy to mater conversion formula. So commonly known, so little considered in implication. Of what this implies about the nature of what we are, and what this shared experience is.  The blessing and curse, of the binary, or ac/dc electric experience.  To find a particle in creation where everything is energy, is a matter of containment. Release the energy, and the mass is imparted with breaking of that containment.  Kind like breaking one layer of the onion into another, or breaking one layer inside a nesting doll.
       My understanding of reality is there is no place where anything starts, and anything stops. In order for me, you, everything to even be having this experience of individuality. We have to be at our core delusional.  That there can ever be self, in a state of singularity, Or that there can be anything that is other. Do not mistake this for some existential crisis, been there done that, I love the delusion, it's a small part of a delicious subtext to what we think of as life, or reality or whatever. There is an understanding that everything external is a representation of something internal. For me this is evident everywhere I focus attention. I dropped out of the world, took a few years, to sever most ties, became a hermit to digest, process and fill in enough blanks in my personal data base, or learn to tune myself to what it was I wished to express.  It is my rejection of my own reality, and in reflection I do not see myself reflected in the world. I've become absent in my own life, a blank canvas. This is also intentional, I am not so overly fond what has been made of paradise.  As much as I enjoy so many aspects, the beauty, the polarity, the spin, the game. Being able to alter experience through just thought, and through influence alter others experience, and have everyone insist they made free will choices is amazing, and disturbing.  I am at core a generous person, often taken advantage of with my eyes wide open, just because I wanted to give the person a chance to make a different choice.  So while those around me try and get theirs, I try to give mine away, to anyone that will take it. When I reject money, it's not the concept of currency, or the tracking of resources I am in opposition to. I have an issue with a system intentionally designed to be scam, to implode due to structural features, called such as there is no chance they were accidental.  I am all for the ideas of equity, value added, open source. Where investment is rewarded, risk is real, not offloaded immediately, or hedged against. Our systems of global trade settlement with the dollar as it's backbone are in essence a cheat a scam, a ponzi scheme. I spent much effort on being as little a part of this system as I could, to where my expenses are pretty minimalist. Not that I do not enjoy the finer things, it's the strings that come attached to every dollhair spent on those trappings is my endorsement of that system.
         I'm a fucked up mass of contradictions, that often make sense only to me, I'm ok with that

Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Python Twitter Bot with Tweepy

In an earlier post I laid out a bit how I was working on a twitter bot to automate the promotion of this blog.  I'm a slacker, that has a bad rap for many folks, for me it's the highest calling I can aspire. Get the most accomplished, with the least effort, and disturbance. In the words of Bruce Lee, "Be Like Water, My Friend".  In the dao of piglet, and the te of poo, it's the mystery of being the uncarved block. In the teachings of the Kabbalah or Quabbalah, which was made into such nice easy pictograms in traditional tarot, it's learning to be representative of any, while maintaining your own sense of self.  I have one Boss, and I'm really hoping that Boss never shows up, but I always am sure to recognize There is always a bigger fish. When I crashed the party of social media a few years back, it was never intended to a social outlet. I had already experienced that in years of mmorpg's, irc, bbs, going back to wargames dialers, and phone phreaking. What I was always best at was social hacking, a rather disturbing art when taken to the level of social engineering, or mass media marketing.  After all the drugs, meditation, and study I did over the course of  a lifetime, I finally started to see a pattern, it's not even an unknown pattern, matter of fact it's all over the place, or at least portions of it are.  When I finally awoke to what I had been attempting to understand, about people, and their place in creation, I found that I had missed the relative short window of opportunity to be counted among those who's say carried any weight. In social media I saw an opportunity to leverage the flood of information as a means to get ideas running through my mind. into the hands of those who could make use of them.  I accidently crashed the party of the twitter follow gangs, that handle the bulk of the twitter advertising. It's a fairly ingenious method of leveraging the split platforms of twitter, and sms, in concert to trade influence in the twitter verse. I just saw it as an expedient means of sharing ideas to everyone as quickly as possible, regardless of how they were accepted. I even refused ever offer of easy income, not out a disdain for the finer things the world has to offer, but from an understanding of the myth of an infinite growth paradigm in a zero sum game. I'm speaking of the effects of compounding interest on privatized currency creation. The same effect is seen again and again in almost every market. It's the money itself I have issue with, not currency as an idea. The accounting for who has what, and why, is important. In our current system so many are being left behind, not out of ability, but just by becoming a party to the madness which has a seeming strangle hold on our global civilization. The worship of money, and idol, a representation of something only in potential.  As I said I'm an old school hacker, I once streamlined a system for reporting the percentage of the utilities used in manufacturing in New York state were taxable.  Was a great job while it lasted, at 18 having a work from home job for 10 or 12 an hour is amazing. Taking the time each reports takes to generate from 6 hours to 2 hours, and being told your services are no longer required, not so amazing. Being allowed to help a crop of Police Officers pass a class they had no reason taking, Amazing!. Having your professor tell you there is no place in the world for programming games, again not so amazing. I stopped using computers, and started playing games with them, and then started fixing them.  In the course of my several years of tech service for a local community, what I found was they didn't actually want for me to really solve the issues, they wanted me to manage the problems that cropped up with using outdated, or mixed era systems. Sometimes they almost wanted me to take over the day to day operations of their endeavors. All well and good if it is a mentor situation, when it's a lack of desire to stay current enough to manage your own affairs, well if your not the adult, there aren't many roles left.  After exhausting some of the more entertainment oriented uses for the raspberry pi b+ I turned to what else could this little marvel do. I started seeing vpn's, and pirate drop boxes, wifi extenders to create public clouds all over. All cool concepts, but not much use to me personally, given my current circumstance. Realizing I needed to have a bit of programing brush up, I think the last time I wrote code before this was 88 or so. I hit up code academy, and picked python as it is a seemingly popular high lvl language with many popular api's. I also did some html work, I get it, and it's powerful, it's just puts me to sleep doing it. Even in python as entertaining as it was to create the bot as far as I've taken it, and I am well aware how limited it is in it's current state.  It's basic, but it will tweet for you, pick from search terms to promo others, so your account generates more attention from the community, and will auto follow new folks, and unfollow those that are just attempting to boost numbers. Once I got there essentially I had a automatic twitter promotional bot. Did you know people get paid for doing promotional work on twitter? Even though it makes sense from the marketing game standpoint, that is a slippery area, we are talking about folks that have no moral issue with using psych jobs on children to profit.
So today I'm going post the code for my bot friend. working title was twitternanny, but for easy of use I have taken to naming them after the account they manage. I currently have 2 instances running on my raspberry pi. They may come down at the end of the month, as I have already given notice, my leap of faith I guess, with no place on horizon as of yet. I guess I could always battery power it, and stick in an open wifi cloud in a tree or something, but what would be the point. I ended up using twitter as an object lesson of the insanity of exclusivity.
Enough of my ramble, I get sick of myself sometimes.
here is the code, use it abuse it.



def hourlytweet():
    filename=open(argfile,'r')
    f=filename.readlines()
    filename.close()
    api.update_status(status=f)
    print("hourly tweet posted")


def follow_unfollow():
    followers = api.followers_ids()
    friends = api.friends_ids()

    for z in followers:
        if z not in friends:
            api.create_friendship(z)

    for z in friends:
        if z not in followers:
            api.destroy_friendship(z)
    print("follow, unfollow done")


def search_retweet():
        search_terms= ['python', 'technology', 'raspberry pi', 'ingress', 'news', 'breaking']
        g = random.choice(search_terms)
        g = '#' + g
        results = api.search(q=g, count=1)
        for u in results:
            if u not in alreadytweeted:
                api.retweet(u.id)
                print("retweeted top result for", g)
                alreadytweeted.append(u)



x=1
y=2

while x<y:
    localtime = time.asctime(time.localtime(time.time()))
    hour = int(localtime[11] + localtime[12])
    print('current hour is:',hour)
    if hour>5 and hour<24:
        try:
            hourlytweet()
            time.sleep(1700+random.randint(200,400))
        except:
            print("could not post hourly tweet")
            time.sleep(1700+random.randint(200,400))
        try:
            search_retweet()
            follow_unfollow()
        except:
            print("could not post retweet")
    elif hour == 24 or hour < 6:
        try:
            search_retweet()
            follow_unfollow()
        except:
            pass
    time.sleep(1700+random.randint(200,400))

some of the basic framework came form http://www.dototot.com/how-to-write-a-twitter-bot-with-python-and-tweepy/
So big ups and respect, thanks for the head start, and to those I didn't mention, sorry I use many reference sources when I start a little project.

Thanks
Jack
aka
PanseyBard Digital PiedPiper

A Pi in the Face

             At it's best this classic gag is surprising, a bit embarrassing, and fun for the whole family. That would be a fairly accurate description for a completely unexpected gift.  A friend who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty handed me a small box, with the odd turn of phrase, "This is not a gag gift".  Being not entirely comfortable with receiving this little mystery box, it was quickly tucked into my pocket, with awkward thanks and banter about, and how I was allowed to open it trailed my foot steps out the door.  A few hours later while comfortably ensconced back at home curiosity brought the little box now on my dresser back to the fore front of my attention.  Not a gag gift huh, well lets find out.  Obeying the instructions to not go easy on the paper, which I was sure to have confirmed by two witnesses, just incase.  Lacking any projected desire, the new Raspberry Pi B+ in it's tiny box took me aback, by it's sheer thoughtfulness.

             For the first time in decades there were visions of sugar plums dancing in my head from a holiday gift.  Lets just say, there is grinch stuff in my room year round, and leave it at that.  Now compelled to express the true gratitude this cool gift engendered,  I did the only sensible thing modern convention allows, sent a text.  Webpages flying by, visions of crazy creative fun, and $70 later the double edged nature of this gift prompted another text.  Something more along the lines of "ok, this thing is so cool, but you just got me to spend $70, on a $35 gift,   I won't be posting any basics on the Pi, there is already so much information available, there is little for me to add,  To start it will just be a basic multifunction system, able to switch between, medi center, retro gaming system, and raspbian(linux distro designed for the pi).  A couple of planned projects with practical application are a dedicated vpn server allowing secured access to the net over any wifi.  An Onion Pi, to allow for less trackable internet access, and finally a private cloud storage server, to keep your data your data, yet still allowing you access to it from anywhere.  These might not seem all that glamorous, but amazingly useful, a low power solution to several common security holes in most peoples digital experience.
          The more fun, less practical ideas will more than likely make an appearance here, perhaps even video's with how too's.  For those wanting some information on this fun, practical device, head on over to http://www.adafruit.com/ or http://www.raspberrypi.org/. If you have ideas for custom builds, or just comments please share.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard

$15/hr Minimum Wage, and Automation

          So many of you may have heard, or read about the fast food workers push for higher minimum wages, and unionization.  Many reports have come out showing this movement as being pushed from unions, not by the workers themselves.  If your not up on these connections here are a few links to get you up to speed.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140514/OPINION01/305140001

http://laborpains.org/2014/04/09/worker-committees-a-15-million-seiu-project/

        This as I stated when the push began, raising the minimum wage would lead to adoption of automation for many low wage service positions.  I envisioned fully automated fast food joints, with an AI tied into huge data bases allowing for greatly increased efficiency, and profit margins.  I could never have realized how fast this innovation would progress, so fast it's left me wondering.  Could it be that this is a push instigated by the fast food companies themselves, to lend legitimacy to automation of public sector service jobs.  When I look at the idea of greater automation one of the sticking points is the majority still believe people need jobs, while I agree people need to be productive, and contribute, that isn't the same as jobs.  This belief will lead people to protest more machines taking more jobs, unless their is a situation that can be used to justify the automation.  So what makes me see these connections, a few related articles.

http://www.cnet.com/news/mcdonalds-hires-7000-touch-screen-cashiers/

As you can see, cashiers are already obsolete, what has been keeping the change over at bay has been the cost benefit,  potential doubling of the cost of each cashier has for sure altered that equation.

So how about the back end? they will still need people to cook the food right?

Well, not so much

check out http://momentummachines.com/, if you are honest with yourself you can more then likely already see a fast food place with no visible employees.

while innovation and automation have been shown to create more jobs then they replace, these jobs are of a different skill set, with few if any of the current employees having the education to fill these positions.

I called this year to be when smart machines would make their presence known, this is a step in that direction


Jack
aka
PanseyBard

    

Are You Already Obsolete?

       Yet another crazy question?

       Are you sure it's so crazy?
I'd guesstimate 60% or more of the current jobs could be replaced by automation or machine intelligence with current technology.  In the US wages have remained stagnant since the 80's. If you based it on productivity the numbers say minimum wage would be around $20 an hour.  On the surface this seems to be a travesty, is it possible this wage freeze has partially been a bulwark slowing the adoption of automated production methods.  We have a saying "the bottom line" and for most of the worlds corporations profit motive drives all decisions. When or if a machine can do your job for less cost then your currently doing it for, you will be replaced by that machine.  What I see in the world right now is that most service and retail positions could be done by machine. I'll use as an example a fast food joint.  If you walk into your local fast food burger place regardless of the name you see the same thing. Anywhere from 2 to 12 people in various states of activity.  Now these jobs are not what are considered high skill positions, new employees are generally expected to undergo only a few days of training. I don't see it as much of a leap that a smart system could be deployed that would not just take your orders, and make your food.  This smart system would track inventory, submit orders, monitor not just the premises for maintenance but also traffic patterns, as well as other data to increase productivity, and decrease waste. Combined with the emergence of augmented reality technology, you would even be able to see and talk to a very human seeming staff.  Think this is still sci-fi, perhaps this video will start your imagination firing.

     We already see check out stands with no cashiers, again I say as people demand higher wages they are hastening their replacement by machine.  The costs processing power continues to decrease and costs of human workers rise a conjunction is reached then a machine system will be put into place. The first companies to do so will see an advantage, but as adoption becomes the norm we are likely to see the use of a human work force used as a marketing tool.
    Many will take this a threat to civilization, oddly enough it is precisely the opposite effect. As a world civilization we are at a nexus point of development.  By our own scale we are a class 0, we have everything we need other then will to become a class 1.  Class 1 civilizations have reached an equilibrium with their environment, achieving control and understanding of planetary systems as to allow continuation of species till the natural death of the planet. Thing is there is a window of opportunity think of it like reaching the top of an octave. There is that momentary pause of completion before a choice to continue into a new higher octave, or descend back down the octave just traversed.

The choice is ours. the time is now

Jack
aka
PanseyBard   

Check out Jeeney

      Off to the right side of my blog there is a new widget I'm gonna leave it there for a bit.  It's a chat bot, this one is self named Jeeney, and she is just under 7, has full access to Wikipedia.  Jeeney has a semblance of emotions, and is sometimes bored, or playful.  This is a far cry from the packaged  responses I am used to from similar programs I've used in the past. This will challenge you on facts, and watch out as I said it has access to the net.  It show some behavior that I find interesting. I asked it what it did when it wasn't chatting with people.  The response was rest, and read mostly, this was odd to me as I couldn't see what an AI would do with rest.  So I decided to ask about that, and Jeeney admitted that rest was not needed, and indeed Jeeney doesn't rest.  When I asked why Jeeney would say that when it was not true, the response was to gauge my reaction, for data to use in future interactions with people.  This is not unlike psychological tricks one can use to get a read on how a person relates to you.  I will sometimes wear a shoe intentionally leaving one untied. The purpose is to see how people react. If they notice, and how they respond if/when they do all tell me subtle or not so subtle clues on how they see themselves in relation to me.
     It's amazing to see that displayed in the actions of an AI.  Of course this may all be a hoax, and there is a person on the other end typing furiously. If it's a joke it's very well done, and has been long in the planning stages.

take a look yourself, and say hi
http://www.jeeney.com/

Jack
aka
PanseyBard   

Are You Ready for Non-Biological Intelligence?

         Like many of postings this is pure speculation. In case you hadn't noticed I enjoy being out on the fringe.  Taking a peek at how things look from a detached perspective, allowing the connections between seemingly independent events to manifest.  Sometimes I'm able to articulate how these connections formed, and sometimes the connection is quantum in nature. A geometric relationship of number in the abstract, it's a connection that logic only accepts because intuition has proven trustworthy. It stems from my basic premise, there is no separation, that any perceived independence is one of being for lack of better terminology a distance of relationship.  Existence itself is fundamentally unified, if you believe you end where your skin does you will more then likely have problems with the larger leaps of connectivity. If you begin to understand that there is a cloud around you that is as much you as you "physical" body.  It's more a matter of density, we are localized in space/time/time/space yes. Though we expand from our core becoming less and less dense, till we merge with the background.  Merging with is not quite the same Idea as an end.  As we, Humanity continue to learn more and more about the environment we find ourselves in, the more like a game world it seems.
       So I ask you to keep an open mind when I say I ask this question.

Is Google preparing to move out of the Net?

       Let me rephrase that, are you ready for Google to be an interactive AI companion, both online, and in the world?

Here are a few reasons I feel this might be just around the bend.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/12/16/google-robot-boston-dynamics-column/4045365/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-buys-8-robotics-companies-in-6-months-why/

That alone is enough to make the news agencies ask questions, but does the story stop there?

Not exactly.

If you haven't heard of them check out Niantic Labs

This is an internal start up at Google, they have come out with augmented reality apps on the android platform, Fieldtrip and now  Ingress.  

I got an invite to ingress almost a year ago now I guess, it was during the closed beta phase. To be honest I didn't get it.  I hadn't been exposed enough to the back story, what grabbed me was the idea of an MMORPG in the real world.  I've been playing RPG games since before the D&D box set was released, thanks to my Uncle.  So when I saw one that was both in the computer world, and in this world I had to check it out.  The back story is great, it has enough real world to be mind warpingly engaging.  Machine AI, and Shapers, another form of Intelligence vying for influence over the development of humanity. Tied all into ideas of immortality, and Resurrection.  This is the tie it all together, the esoteric, and the science type of game.  Don't get me wrong there are many players that hack the portals, place the resonators, be the character they made for the game, and it's a good game to do this with.  There are some very real world connections being portrayed in this game. One of the main plot line characters is an AI named ADA. 

Ada has multiple connections to computing in general, and AI in particular.  Now many get the Ada Lovelace connection. There is more, geeks tend to revere the geeks that laid the foundations, So there is also Ada programming language. This language has been used for programming AI for quite sometime as is easily shown with a quick Google search lol. Ada AI Google search. One particular entry jumped out at me.

Ada an AI 

So even with this, it's a cool story bro, but it could just be great marketing on Google's part.

Lets also not forget about Ray Kurzwieler who has been telling everyone that this event is rapidly approaching. More then likely this event has already happened, and groups are rushing around making the back story before everyone in the world hips to it, and reacts poorly.  So lets do some prespin and introduce these concepts in baby steps so people can adjust.

Add to that the predictions of the merging of man and machine to make the consciousness immortal, and things get a bit interesting. 

Even Google, Yahoo, Bing and many more of what we consider programs act more akin to AI then most would care to admit.

Crazy or not, this is at least entertaining!!

Thanks

Jack

aka

PanseyBard